Data center report goes AWOL

By Amber Corrin

Nov 07, 2011

The Defense Department was supposed to file a report to the Office of Management and Budget in October addressing progress in data center consolidation efforts, but a month after deadline the report still has yet to be filed, according to a NextGov report.

Federal agencies were due to report progress under a federal data center consolidation plan to OMB by Oct. 7. On that day, a post on the DOD CIO website said that a draft was in progress and would be released in 30 days pending “internal DOD review.” That draft has yet to publicly surface, meaning DOD missed the OMB date and then its own extended deadline.

“DOD remains on target to achieve or exceed previously stated goals for data center closures and consolidation,” the post read.

The consolidation moves are part of the broader Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, a plan Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has said he expects will save the government upwards of $5 billion. In an Oct. 7 post to the White House website, VanRoekel said agencies plan to close 962 data centers through 2015, with 472 to be closed by the end of the next calendar year.

VanRoekel also said he is widening the scope of the consolidation initiative to include smaller data centers.

DOD CIO Teri Takai has publicly pledged her own efforts in data center consolidation, stressing that the move is part of critical DOD plans to streamline overhead costs and achieve greater efficiencies.

In August Takai said DOD had already shuttered eight of its data centers with plans to close down another 44 by the end of the fiscal year. Several requests to her office to find out how many data centers have been closed so far and the status of consolidation progress have gone unanswered.

“DOD remains committed to identifying candidates for data center closure and consolidation in support of the [defense secretary’s] efficiency efforts and the IT Reform plan goal of closing 800 federal data centers by 2015,” Takai wrote in an August blog post on cio.gov. “We are making progress on several initiatives that will increase our efficiency and effectiveness in developing systems to support our nation’s warfighters, without sacrificing security.”